In which the random, trashy, pop-cultural musings of Mel are displayed in all their superficial glory.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Tell me a story, Mel! I've hardly had any internet access recently, so I haven't had a chance to write on this blog. Apparently there is some shadowy audience that's amused by my ramblings. The other day Jeremy offered to pay for my internet access to ensure I kept writing. I should totally have called him on that.

But anyway. Among the things I've been pondering lately is what to do with my short fiction. I have always written fiction, and I used to subscribe to authorly ambitions of professionalism before I realised I probably wasn't good enough and should stick to hackwork. My first ever novel, finished at age 7, was an illustrated three-volume manuscript called The Adventures of the Three Robot Princesses. They were called Anna-Maria, Sarah-Jane and Marie-Celestine. Anna-Maria was accident-prone and feisty, and often the source of their misadventures. I can't remember much about Sarah-Jane, which is often the fate of middle children; but Marie-Celestine was intelligent and analytical, and often got them out of their scrapes.

My second novel, which I referred to only as my Master Novel, was a truly embarrassing epic fantasy for young adult readers. The utterly unironic story centred around a land grab by a warlike hill tribe, the Drmal, for the fertile valley country occupied by a peaceful tribe called the Llosbre. The Drmal planned to do this on the morning of the Llosbre's holiday of Peterre, the rain-god. A Llosbre girl named Alsi, who was in the forest collecting the special flowers used in the ceremony, happened upon a Drmal advance scouting party, and of course they had to kidnap her. She escaped with the help of hunky young warrior Maydl (these names were all made up by randomly striking a typewriter with my eyes closed) and sought the help of a prophesised saviour child who lived with the Nemne priests (who were basically Druids). I am so embarrassed that I can't write any more about this. I was fourteen!!

But anyway, I continued writing stories, although nothing really ever came of them. So, inspired by Shrover's Shit Novel, I have decided to put them on a blog where you can all read them and marvel at my literary genius and the astounding fact that I do not yet have a publishing contract.

The first story is called Alleura, and I wrote it for the 2002 Age short story competition, but didn't finish it in time. It begins:

Paul was asleep in the car. He wore a grey suit, with a blue striped shirt and pink tie that had begun the day looking dandyish. Now, however, the shirt was crumpled, the collar undone, the tie loosened. Paul’s petulant face was flushed in sleep like a child’s, all long eyelashes and over-red lips. His hair looked childishly rumpled too; but the fairyfloss smell of hair wax told otherwise.The car itself was a late model BMW convertible, the colour of mercury, with soft leather upholstery in a darker grey. A woman’s beige leather jacket lay abandoned on the passenger seat. Paul was nestled into the racing-style driver’s seat. His head lolled against the headrest. His arms hung limply. The only sound in the car was Paul’s soft breathing.